Swaziland halves world's highest HIV infection rate: report

Swaziland, which bears the world’s heaviest HIV burden, has almost halved the rate of new infections in five years by boosting access to virus-suppressing drugs, researchers said Monday. The country — where one in three adults is infected with the AIDS-causing virus — has vastly expanded public programmes to test people for HIV infection and put them on life-saving anti-retroviral treatment (ART). “The rate of new HIV infections has been reduced by half,” Velephi Okello of the Swazi health ministry told journalists at an HIV science conference in Paris.